A Guide to
Nature Institute Resources

About this Guide

Since our founding in 1998, The Nature Institute has been practicing,
teaching, and refining context-rich methods for understanding the world
and for striving to ethically relate to it. Based on the fruits of that
work, we offer this resource guide for holistic sustainability education.
The resources here will prepare educators to help students integrate their
growing knowledge about nature into the broadest ecological context of
all: ethical concern for the entire natural world.

Much here is oriented toward helping educators develop the capacities they
need to perceive and understand nature in more contextual and intimate
ways. We also highlight resources for students themselves to use, and ones
that contain potential activities for students.

We hope that educators will be inspired by the resources to develop their
own original activities based on their intimate knowledge of the students
they are working with.

Each resource is briefly summarized and the appropriate educational levels
indicated. We have organized the resources in areas of focus. To go
directly to a specific area, you may click on its title below.

1. Foundations of Holistic Sustainability Education

In this essay, George Russell, professor emeritus of biology at Adelphi
University and founding co-editor of Orion magazine, asks how we can
restore to children an essential, healthy relation to the natural world.
Many children’s primary exposure to nature, he notes, is now mediated by
that most severe tool of abstraction — the electronic screen. To help
address that urgent challenge, he recommends many specific books and
authors for educators, as well as some for children, and, most importantly,
he describes the kinds of experience in nature that children need to form
a lasting bond with the rest of the natural world.

As Russell writes, “We will honor and protect what we have come to love
and admire, and such feelings have their source in personal experience.”
He adds: “Too much emphasis on concepts and the mechanical principles of
nature, especially in the early years, does little to establish the sort
of deep communion with nature” that will lead to a lasting bond. “Young
people, above all, need to sink their hands into things that are real and
actual.”

How can we develop an awareness of the transformational nature of life
that can increasingly inform our own thought and action, so that we become
more conscious and responsible participants in an evolving earth? This
book directly addresses that question. It is written as a practical guide
that shows, through concrete and vivid examples, how we can learn from the
context dependency of nature to think and act in more dynamic and
context-sensitive ways.

Class Reading: High school courses in
Environ­mental Science and Life Sciences; undergraduate and graduate
courses in Education, Environmental Science, History and Philosophy of
Science, and Life Sciences.

Teacher Resource:
A basic professional development tool for all educators, from early
childhood through postsecondary education, who are seeking to grow in the
inner capacities they hope to cultivate in their students. In particular,
the book guides educators in developing capacities to attend ever more
carefully to our participation in the concrete reality of the world we are
embedded in; to perceive it as dynamic, interwoven processes rather than a
set of separate objects; and to become more receptive, fluid, and dynamic
in our own thinking.

Every student has an unknown future, full of potential. How can a teacher
prepare individual students for what is unknown? How can the unknown play
a positive role in the life of both teacher and student as they work
together toward mutual unfolding of potential. In this article, Craig
provides teachers with guidance in crafting learning encounters for
students – that is, opportunities to experience education as attentive
exploration of the world and to participate in how living science unfolds.

A fundamental guide for holistic science education that clearly explains
the pedagogy and presents many examples of applying the methods. Craig
demonstrates how to help students: (1) develop the critical faculty of
asking questions through the use of scientific riddles; (2) develop
logical thinking anchored in observation; (3) grow in their capacities for
complex thinking that discerns the difference between a necessary
condition and an overly simplistic single-cause explanation; and (4) bring
their analytic powers together with their imagination to discover for
themselves ecological relations within and between organisms. He explains
how these skills are related to ecological thinking about the world. He
also provides specific guidance in relating the high-school science
curriculum, from 9th to 12th grade, to the changing developmental needs of
students. Craig concludes: “Nothing is more important than to help the
students school their abilities to see relations and connections, to see
how things fit together in the world. This is precisely the capacity
humanity needs to find creative solutions to the myriad problems we create
that lead to a dissolution, rather than to a building-up of the world.”

The late German physicist Martin Wagenschein, a champion for reconnecting
science education with nature and with children’s developmental needs,
explores here how both teaching and learning can become living experiences
for the participants. Wagenschein, a longtime high school teacher and
education professor, shows that covering large amounts of material is not
the way to help students learn. Real learning occurs through careful
consideration of exemplary cases in which the whole of the subject matter
can be experienced through a concrete instance. (For other teacher
resources rich in pedagogical and practical suggestions for K-12 science
classes, see Experience-Based Science
Education: The Work of Martin Wagenschein.)

In this philosophical essay on ecological responsibility, Steve suggests
that we have other choices besides trying to control nature or to leave
the “wildness” of nature untouched by human hands. We can begin to enter
into “an attentive, reverential conversation” with the partial mystery of
Otherness we encounter in the rest of the living world. “The very first —
and perhaps the most important — conversational step we can take may be to
acknowledge how we have so far failed to assume a respectful
conversational stance.” (An adapted version of this article is Chapter 3
in Nature Institute Perspectives #3:
In the Belly of the Beast: Nature,
Technology, and the Human Prospect (2004). That entire 74-page monograph
is freely available to download or can be purchased in print from our
bookstore.)

Class Reading:
grade 12 courses in Ecology and Environmental Science; undergraduate and
graduate courses in Ecology, Environmental Science, and History and
Philosophy of Science.

In response to the emerging technical potential to genetically engineer
children, this article calls for “reopening science to the categories of
meaning, value, and purpose.” At first glance, the sophisticated,
supposedly value-neutral, world of science appears at the opposite extreme
from the naive, value-centered, imaginative world of the child. “How can
you recognize a better child if you must shun the language of value? More
specifically, how can we, as scientists or parents, propose to manipulate
an individual child’s destiny if we cannot seriously ask about that
destiny — about identity and purpose and tasks?”

Class Reading:
Undergraduate and graduate courses in History and Philosophy
of Science, Molecular Biology, and Science, Technology, and Society.

A provocative essay that challenges the wisdom of efforts to teach
computer programming to young children. In such efforts, Steve argues, the
child loses — never having fully developed it in the first place — that
fluid, imaginative ability to let experience reshape itself in meaningful
ways before she carves out of it a set of atomic facts. (The award-winning
1995 book from which this chapter is excerpted was prescient in
predicting — contrary to widespread political and commercial hype at the
time — that heavily investing in computers for K-12 classrooms would not
lead to a renaissance in American education. Its concerns and critiques
remain pertinent to current wishful thinking about the role of advanced
electronic media in the education of children.)

Class Reading:
Undergraduate and graduate courses in K-12 Education,
History and Philosophy of Science, and Science, Technology and Society.

This provocative essay challenges the wisdom of efforts to increase
children’s interest in science and math by designing immersive experiences
of electronic media in the classroom. Steve notes that the ubiquity of
nature videos has not translated into a rush among young people to become
naturalists, and goes on to describe why.

Class Reading:
Undergraduate and graduate courses in pre-K to grade 12
Education, History and Philosophy of Science, and Science, Technology and
Society.

A guide to methods for self-learning that can deeply change who educators
themselves are, and prepare them to lead students in developing their own
capacities for open-minded, flexible, and critically astute thinking.
Includes specific group observational exercises that can be practiced with
both colleagues and student to encourage the consideration of different
points of view and to avoid letting assumptions and mental habits block
new learning. The goal: transformational learning, rooted in perceiving,
listening, picturing, and, over time, growing in self-awareness as well.

2. Perceiving Nature — Taking Appearances Seriously

Expressing the Being of Animals
— a recorded talk by Craig Holdrege, with many slides, exploring the
holistic vision of the German Expressionist painter, Franz Marc. (2017).

Through the story of the artist’s life, his words, and slides of his
breathtaking work, Craig shows the loving attention with which Marc
(1880-1916) was able to enter into, and profoundly convey, the life of
animals. “I have no desire to paint animals as I see them,” Marc wrote,
“but rather as they are, how they themselves see the world and feel their
being.” The slides presented here begin with Marc’s early drawings and
paintings (including fascinating photographs of his work as a young
teacher of anatomical drawing), trace his further evolution as an artist,
and end with his powerfully vibrant expressionist works.

Class Reading:
High school and undergraduate courses in the visual arts, zoology, and
ecology.

Teacher Resource:
Pre-K through undergraduate educators in the arts, humanities, zoology,
and ecology.

In a culture filled with screens and technology-mediated experiences, how
can we help children interact directly with essential realities so their
ideas can be rooted in the world and not in the fantasies of the virtual
world? Based on Craig’s presentation at the 2014 Techno Utopia Teach-In in
New York City, this article links to a video that is best watched without
sound.

Class Reading and Video Resource:
Undergraduate courses in Ecology, Education, Environmental Studies, Life
Sciences, and History and Philosophy of Science.

From the gracefully ponderous motion of a massive pendulum to the
mysteries hidden in still water, sound, and radioactivity, the late German
physicist Martin Wagenschein offers here a master teacher’s insights into
experienced-based learning that engages the student in a lively way.
Wagenschein was a longtime high-school science teacher and university
professor. (For other resources that are rich in pedagogical insights,
practical advice, and experiential activities for K-12 science classes,
see
Experience-Based Science Education: The Work
of Martin Wagenschein.)

Can we gain our scientific concepts through openness to the world instead
of imposing them on the world? It’s the difference between a living
thinking that respects the phenomena, and a habitual thinking that cuts us
off from the phenomena. By attending to the way plants grow, we begin to
appreciate the nature of living thinking. Seeds of our own transformation
are created every time we catch ourselves considering a problem or
phenomenon through some pre-formed conceptual lens and then drop that lens
and turn back, in openness, to the things themselves. In this act, we
acknowledge our ignorance and readiness to engage in the concrete
situation. With heightened awareness, we can begin forming concepts out of
interaction with the world rather than imposing them upon the world. “The
shift from abstraction and object-thinking to a plantlike dynamic thinking
would help us develop the capacities we need to truly root our
understanding and our interactions with nature in nature.” (The essay
includes practical suggestions to help develop such living thinking.)

Class Reading:
High school (grades 11-12) courses in Ecology and Life
Sciences; undergraduate and graduate courses in Ecology, Environmental
Science, History and Philosophy of Science, and Life Sciences.

In this essay about educational priorities in a device-saturated culture,
Talbott argues that educators and parents don’t need to focus time and
money on making sure that students embrace technology. Technophobia, after
all, is not a dominant trait of our society. What we need is
balance and connection. The adaptation, even addiction, to
advanced technologies occurs all too well on its own. “Children must
learn, rather, how to hold these technologies in a human balance. And I
suggest that a bird in the hand – and a pine cone, and a rock, and a
crawdad, and a snowflake – are the counterbalances we need if our
alienation from nature is not to become more than the world can bear.
These bits of nature may not seem like much to us – but that is the
problem. For the child they can hold magic – exactly the magic that, in a
matured form, may be required to ground the adult in a society encompassed
on every side by virtuality.”

3. Visual Appearance and Phenomena-Based Physics

From the gracefully ponderous motion of a massive pendulum to the
mysteries hidden in still water, sound, and radioactivity, the late German
physicist Martin Wagenschein offers here a master teacher’s insights into
experienced-based learning that engages the student in a lively way.
Wagenschein was a longtime high school science teacher and university
professor. (For other resources that are rich in pedagogical insights,
practical advice, and experiential activities for K-12 science classes,
see Experience-Based Science Education: The
Work of Martin Wagenschein.)

Class Reading:
Undergraduate and graduate courses in Education and Physics.

Henrike reflects on observations she and colleagues made of the
demonstrations — and the children interacting with them — at the Exploratorium
in San Francisco, a highly-acclaimed “Museum for Science, Art, and
Perception.” What would developmentally appropriate activities really look
like if they were to effectively nourish children’s capacities of
observation, learning, and inquiry?

Teacher Resource:
Pre-K to grade 12 and teacher educators.

Light in the Dark — a classroom demonstration by Henrike Holdrege.
In Context #29 (Spring 2013).

This description of a simple demonstration for the classroom sparks
wonder. It can also be the entryway into deeper reflections upon the
nature of light, and the conditions under which visual appearances arise.
We learn how darkness and matter play a key role in all appearances.

Class Activity:
Middle school and high school courses in Physics and Optics.

A challenge is presented here: With a few moments’ thought, can you give a
reasonable description of how the earth and sky look to someone standing
on the moon? It might not be quite as easy as you think. The exercise,
however, is a good one for developing an ability to see relationships – in
this case, between the earth and the moon – from different points of view.
Educators can try this exercise in contextual thinking for themselves and
also adapt it for astronomical lessons and observations with students.

Class Activity (if adapted for students):
Middle school and high school courses in Astronomy.

4. Whole Organism Biology Studies

The Nature Institute’s revolutionary approach to science is exemplified in
holistic, qualitative studies of particular whole organisms. These studies
demonstrate how each organism is characterized by wholeness and unity, and
at the same time is intimately entwined with the larger ecology of life.
For sustainability educators and their students, these studies provide a
complement and contrast to conventional laboratory and textbook studies
that focus on organisms as mechanisms. Below are selected resources for
transforming conventional approaches to academic life sciences into a new,
profoundly ecological perspective. Such a perspective is far more in tune
with the irreducible reality of our living ecosphere, within which
humanity is immersed and our activities must harmonize.

The sloth is a singular animal that expresses slowness in so many of its
characteristics and even slows down processes in the rain forest in which
it lives. Educators and students will enjoy getting to know this
remarkable creature. As Craig explains: “I have tried to describe the
sloth in a way that allows us to catch glimpses of its wholeness. I can
now refer to such characteristics as slowness, inertia, blending in with
the environment, receding or pulling in and not actively projecting
outward. Each expression is a different way of pointing to the same
coherent whole. Taken alone, as abstract concepts or definitions, they are
empty. They are real only inasmuch as they light up within the description
or perception of the animal’s characteristics. But they are not things
like a bone or an eye. They are, in context, vibrant concepts that reveal
the animal’s unique way of being.”

Class Reading:
High school courses in Ecology, Evolution, and Life
Sciences; undergraduate courses in Ecology, Evolution, and Zoology.

The potent methods of whole organism biology are discussed and then
demonstrated here, allowing a glimpse into the radically different world
of a fascinating creature – the star-nosed mole. Each species lives out a
unique way-of-being. To explore an animal’s behavior, we include how it
actively and selectively relates to the world around it. This we can call
the animal’s intentionality – how it shapes its existence by its ways of
interacting. By carefully observing an animal’s behavior and the concrete
context of its different behaviors, we gain understanding of its specific
intentionality. But we can’t fully penetrate this behavior without
attending to how it moves and the way this movement is shaped
through the form and function of its various organs. The point is to build
up vivid pictures of the animal from as many sides as possible. By
continually immersing ourselves in concrete observation and then
connecting our observations to vivid inner images, we enter into a
conversation with the animal. Through such methods, the animal begins to
show itself – in this case, the remarkable star-nosed mole.

Class Reading:
High school (grades 11-12) courses in Ecology, Evolution,
Life Sciences, and Zoology; undergraduate courses in Ecology, Evolution,
Zoology.

A short essay explaining what a powerful central theme metamorphosis can
be for high school studies of human development, ecology, and all other
life sciences. It is especially developmentally helpful for high school
students, who are in the midst of their own personal metamorphosis. As a
fundamental theme, it can prepare every individual, upon graduation, for a
lifetime of creative, flexible thinking, especially in terms of perceiving
and understanding the ecological context of all human actions. Just as
important, it can also empower them to perceive the creative, dynamic
possibilities of their own developmental path and their personal potential
to constructively contribute to a healthy future for all.

When we speak about metamorphosis, we’re not only concerned with specific
content, such as the metamorphosis of a tadpole into a frog. We’re
concerned more fundamentally with a whole approach to understanding life.
If we bring living phenomena to the students in very concrete ways, we can
lead them into seeing the unity of an organism as it develops in time, as
a fully integrated being. Living beings are not merely an assembly of
different parts that happen to work. We can help them practice going
beyond that building-block, spatial mode of cognition that dominates our
thinking and colors all of our understanding. Students will grow in the
capacity to understand the dynamic and interconnected nature of life that
humanity direly needs in times that are so dominated by fragmentation.
That’s why working towards metamorphic thinking in high school biology
classes is so essential.

(Other chapters in the Colloquium book, freely available online
here,
are filled with pedagogical insights and practical curricular suggestions
and activities for high school educators in the life sciences and
environmental studies.)

5. The Living Nature of Life – From Mechanism to Organism

Many of the articles in this section are abridged versions of longer
articles that can be found on our web resource,
Biology Worthy of Life. You
may want to browse through that large collection of publications. They
clarify how common, mechanistic ideas about biological phenomena are
misleading and often false. They also reveal how science actually supports
a much more dynamic and complex picture of ecological relationships both
within and between living organisms. We attempt to advance a nuanced and
dynamic picture of life that is crucial for sustain­ability education.

The fact that every organism is, in the first place, an activity has
radical implications for biology. It was Aristotle who first
characterized animals as “self-moving,” and not many in biology today
would disagree. Yet this truth is rarely taken with real seriousness.
This article lays out some of the most important issues, ranging from the
old struggle between reductionism and vitalism to contemporary
perplexities of cognitive science having to do with mind and body,
perception and consciousness, thought and object of thought.

Class Reading:
High school (grade 12) courses in Life Sciences;
undergraduate courses in History and Philosophy of Science and Life
Sciences.

Thinking in biology hasn’t caught up with the results of contemporary
research. In particular, an apparent taboo against any explicit
acknowledgment of intention and agency in all features and activities of
the organism is a serious block to further progress in understanding.

Class Reading:
High school (grade 12) courses in Life Sciences; undergraduate and
graduate courses in History and Philosophy of Science and Life Sciences.

This article critically examines the strong emphasis upon machine-like
design in conventional biology, and draws from the most recent research
findings to argue that this framework is now scientifically obsolete.

Class Reading:
High school (grade 12) courses in Life Sciences; undergraduate and
graduate courses in History and Philosophy of Science and Life Sciences.

A microorganism known as Deinococcus radiodurans can endure massive
doses of radiation that fragment its genome into hundreds of pieces. Its
proteins simply reassemble a whole genome from the fragments. It raises a
question that turns out to be universally applicable: Where is wisdom
stored in the organism? No place in particular — and certainly not only in
the genome. Instead, we are led to think of the organism in its totality
as an active agent in the world.

Class Reading:
High school (grade 12) courses in Life Sciences; undergraduate and
graduate courses in History and Philosophy of Science and Life Sciences.

The development of complex organisms tells a dramatic story about the
plasticity of DNA in the “hands” of the whole cell and whole organism. The
story of development is first of all a story — a narrative with intention
and direction — not merely a series of physical causes and effects. The
text we present here is excerpted from Steve’s article,
Genes and the Central Fallacy of
Evolutionary Theory.

Class Reading:
High school (grade 12) courses in Life Sciences; undergraduate and
graduate courses in History and Philosophy of Science and Life Sciences.

For those seeking a more holistic understanding of biology than
conventional academic approaches provide, this article highlights a few
signs of potential health and transformation, particularly in the
literature of molecular biology. The purpose here is to convey a hint of
how researchers are increasingly finding themselves grappling with the
incredible fluidity and plasticity of organisms under the influence of a
governing context, and to point to implications that many biologists
haven’t yet fully appreciated due to the inertia of old habits of thought.

Class Reading:
High school (grade 12) courses in Life Sciences; undergraduate and
graduate courses in History and Philosophy of Science and Life Sciences.

7. Impacts of Mechanistic Thinking and Technology

A head-on critique of the emerging field of synthetic bioengineering,
euphemistically named “synthetic biology” by its practitioners. An oak
tree does not at all have the same way of being as a weeping willow, nor
is an amoeba’s movement (whether at the level of the whole organism or of
molecular process) choreographed in the style of a paramecium’s. If and
when synthetic biologists start discussing how they might reproduce such a
unique gesturing — a gesturing they must carefully, deliberately and
knowledgeably compound out of the innumerable molecular activities
proceeding simultaneously and interdependently in the cell — all in order
to produce from scratch a particular sort of organism with a particular
sort of recognizable character, then one could believe they have begun to
glimpse the problem of attempting to synthesize life. Otherwise, such
efforts are little more than “crude and mostly ignorant, trial-and-error
manipulation of already living things. . . a technologically sophisticated
discipline of tinkering.”

Class Reading:
High school (grades 11-12) courses in Ecology, Life Sciences, Philosophy,
and Social Studies; undergraduate and graduate courses in Ecology,
Environmental Sciences, Evolutionary Biology, History and Philosophy of
Science, Life Sciences, Molecular Biology, Philosophy, and Science,
Technology, and Society.

From Odysseus to the Amazon jungle, from feeding chickadees by hand to the
high abstractions of science – this booklet looks at the role of
technology in human life and in the management (or mismanagement) of
nature, and also assesses our future prospects. Readers may find the
insights it offers outrageous or revelatory, but they will never find them
conventional. See especially Chapter One: “Deceiving Virtues of
Technology.” The printed booklet can be purchased from our
bookstore, or
downloaded for free.

Class Reading:
Undergraduate and graduate courses in Education, Engineering, History and
Philosophy of Science, Information Technology, and Philosophy.

This prescient, award-winning book correctly predicted — contrary to
widespread political and commercial hype at the time — that heavily
investing in computer technology for K-12 classrooms would not lead to a
renaissance in American education. The book’s concerns and critiques, in
terms of the seductions of technology and the too often ignored
developmental needs of children, remain pertinent to current wishful
thinking about the role of advanced electronic media in the education of
children and about advanced technologies in general being the “solution”
to all that ails society.

Class Reading:
Undergraduate and graduate courses in Education and History and Philosophy
of Science.

8. Foundations of Holistic, Contextual Science

Practicing the Goethean approach to science involves heightened
methodological awareness and sensitivity to the way we engage in the
phenomenal world. We need to overcome our habit of viewing the world in
terms of objects and leave behind the scientific propensity to explain via
reification and reductive models. Science is a conversation with nature
and this perspective can inform a new scientific frame of mind. This
article presents the Goethean approach via a practical example (a study of
a plant, skunk cabbage) and discuss some of the essential features of
Goethean methodology and insight: the riddle; into the phenomenon; exact
picture building; and seeing the whole.

Class Reading:
High school (grade 12) courses in Science; undergraduate courses in
Ecology, Environmental Science, History and Philosophy of Science, and Life
Sciences.

Goethe’s seminal essay on the nature of knowing and scientific methodology
and experimentation. Because he had learned that “in living nature nothing
happens that is not in connection with a whole,” he recognized that as a
scientist must always view individual facts or results of individual
experiments within larger contexts. For example, individual experiments do
not provide “proofs;” rather, one needs to carry out a series of
experiments, varying the conditions to gain real insight into phenomena.

Class Reading:
High school (grades 11-12) courses in Science; undergraduate courses in
Ecology, Environmental Science, History & Philosophy of Science, and Life
Sciences.

For educators, an introductory guide to teaching methods in holistic
science: “I have often thought that if a teacher wanted to have one
succinct motto to hang above his or her bed, she’d have a hard time
finding a better one than: “characterize, don’t define.” In order to
characterize, say, an animal, we have to carry within ourselves a vivid
picture of its shape, how it moves, the sounds it makes, its habitat and
the ways it relates to its environment. We bring alive through our
imagination and speech something of the animal’s nature . . . When we
paint a picture of the animal in this way — a process in which the students
are involved — the animal can begin to live in the soul of the child or
adolescent.” (This article originally appeared in Renewal: A Journal for
Waldorf Education, Fall 2005.)

9. Goethe and Other Holistic Scientists

Goethe’s seminal essay on the nature of knowing and scientific methodology
and experimentation. Because he had learned that “in living nature nothing
happens that is not in connection with a whole,” he recognized that as a
scientist must always view individual facts or results of individual
experiments within larger contexts. For examples, individual experiments
do not provide “proofs;” rather, one needs to carry out a series of
experiments, varying the conditions to gain real insight into phenomena.

Class Reading:
High school (grades 11-12) courses in Science; undergraduate courses in
Ecology, Environmental Science, History and Philosophy of Science, and Life
Sciences.